


Animal Soul

by Lucky_Cassandra



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Adventure, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:33:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky_Cassandra/pseuds/Lucky_Cassandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had set out in opposite directions to find the answer to the same question. Ed and Al travelled different roads, but will the answers they find be that different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Grasslands

**Author's Note:**

> I have been trying to sit down and write this out for months. I have it all laid out in my head, I just need to find time to work on it. I wonder if posting what I have so far will speed up the writing process.

Ed looked up from his notes at the cry of distant birds. Welcoming the distraction, he stood, streched and walked a few paces from his tent towards the open field. His tent was positioned at the very edge of the settlement, which was little more than a cluster of tents organised around a central bonfire. The slightly detached position offered him a clearer view of the expanse of the grasslands and the occasional sight of the many different animals who lived in the area.

Today it was a couple of large, predatory birds who were circling a cluster of trees about a mile off, probably drawn there by small animals seeking shelter in the tall plants. He always thought it necessary to observe the life in the grasslands whenever he could, because understanding the connection between the animals and people who lived here seemed essential to understanding the population he had been living with for several months. 

Ed had learned and understood many years before the concept of “All is One and One is All”, humans, animals, plant and objects being a part of the same flow, the same circle of life. However, these people seemed to have taken the concept one step further. Ed was still trying to wrap his head around what the difference was, where the concept was applied differently here, but he still couldn't graps where his interpretation differed from the one that was a truth universally aknowledged out here.

Of course speaking two different languages didn't help. Apparently, very very few Amestrians had ever bothered to make their way out here, if any. At any rate, none had done so recently, or bothered to teach Amestrian around here, or bring back home some knowledge of the language the Ladu spoke. Ed didn't know if Ladu was a word which had a more complex meaning, but it was what his hosts called themselves, so that is what he called them. After being out here for little over three months, Ed had acquired a reasonable grasp of the language, which meant he could function with the Ladu concerning food, hunting and working together in the settlement. Abstract dissertation regarding alchemical truths was a different matter entirely.

The language spoken by the Ladu did not have a difficult structure, the grammar and construction of the sentences was fairly simple and straighforward. The complex bit was the incredibly rich vocabulary. It seemed like the Ladu had a seperate word for everything, including a different word for the grass in three stages of yellowing. They weren't used to strangers, either, so misusing a word or not using the proper one caused major understanding problems.

Sometimes the communication problems became so frustrating he had to remind himself why he was here, why he had to try harder. How pathetic, he still needed reminders. For a short while he had believed bringing Al's body back was all he wanted, and that he would be at peace with that done. Quickly, however, he had realized his nightmares were not gone. And it wasn't just old nightmares about his mother, about Al, about the homunculi, either. He often dreamed of Nina. That was what had gotten him to start moving again. Making chimeraes was still mostly a mystery, very few had ever succeeded, and no one had ever been able to undo a transmutation of that kind at all. But Alchemical theorey was adamant, everything that could be done could also be undone, even a philosopher's stone (Marcoh had effectively demostrated that years ago, Al had told him, even though Ed had not been there to see it). So that meant there was something that was missing, something unknown or unaccounted for. It wasn't even clear why some human-animal transmutations were succesful while others weren't. So he and Al had decided to leave again, to travel further to find answers to the painful question that kept him awake at night. Could they have helped Nina and Alexander? Was it just their ignorance and their inability to perform a transmutation that had killed the little girl?

While Al had travelled to Xing to learn alchaestry, Ed had travelled west to Creta and had started gathering information about the Alchemy used there. He had quickly discovered that Alchemy in most places was not exactly reagarded as a science, but it was treated more like magic. Very often, alchemists did not know very well what they were doing, so backlashes were relatively common. Still, he had run into some interesting people and places, like the temple where the monks could merge different animals using alchemy, and more importantly, undo the transmutation. This was done during a religious ritual performed at the temple, during which it was believed their gods were showing their power over living beings. Ed was convinced the simple transmutation arrays the monks used wouldn't work if a human being was involved. Also, the monks merged animals that were fairly similar to one another, like a zebra with a horse or a duck with a goose. Of the three stages of a transmutaion Ed was familiar with, understanding, decomposition and recomposition, the monks skimmed over the first. Their understanding was incomplete, which is why the array they used was too simple and wouldn't work for animals with more pronounced differences.The experience had taught Ed to look for alchemy in unlikely places, though.

With that spirit he had eventually been drawn out there in the grasslands by a Ladu legend that he had heard at the temple. Like many other populations, the Ladu had their story about the creation of the world, and in their case they believed superior beings, half-animal and half-human, had created the world as a place where all their children, humans and animals, could live as equals in a balanced and neverending life cycle. What had interested Ed was the stories about the ceremonies the Ladu still performed to celebrate the creators, during which animals and humans were merged temoprarily to resemble the cerators in a blue and white thunderstorm. He thought this might mean creating a chimera with Alchemy, and, more importantly, undoing the transmutation at the end. 

So he was now out here with the Ladu, trying to be accepted as one of them before the time came for another ceremony. Apparently, if he had understood correcly his conversations with the panna (something like their spiritual guide, Ed had gathered), the Ceremony of Creation was coming up in a few months. And he was planning to be here when it did.


	2. Life Force

“Alphonse, I really don't understand what is hard about this,” Mei said, as she kneeled back down at table.

“Well, Alchemy and Alchaestry stem from entirely different principles, the components we are talking about are different things!” Al was slightly exasperated, again. This scene had been playing out again and again between them, whenever they thought they might be making some progress.

He had been here for months... the long trip with Jerso and Zampano had been difficult, but the two chimeraes had been a great help and a lot of company. He had asked Ed to let him be alone on this particular trip, but now he was glad they had come along. He really was not used to being on his own for such lengths of time. And seeing Mei again, and the study of Alchaestry, and Xing, and all the things and places he had seen... It was such an amazing adventure, and it was only the beginning. He would never allow himself to forget why he was here, though, his aim, what had torn him from his newly restored life to keep travelling, to keep searching...

“No, the basic constituents are the same.” Mei's voice tore him from his thoughts back to the present. “We are talking about life here, life is the same everywhere.” Mei crossed her arms and frowned. 

“Listen, Alchemy treats humans as being made up of three things, soul, mind and body,” Al repeated for what felt like the millionth time.

“You said that already, and I really don't see why it should be different with animals. Biogically, the difference between animals and humans is irrelevant. The life force flows in exactly the same way.”

Al drew a slow breath, then released it silently. “Alchemy doesn't work like that. Humans are one thing, everything else is another story. Matter, or the body, is only a part of what a person is! If you are trying to transmute an object, you don't need to worry about soul or mind.”

“That is exactly my point. In Alchaestry, everything is treated in the same way. The flow, Alphonse, the dragon's pulse. It flows through everyting,” Mei explained again. “There is no difference.”

Al couldn't just discard everything he had know, been so sure of, for years. “But that, in Alchemy, would be equivalent to saying that a lump of metal had a mind and a soul. It can't be right.” He closed his eyes and his eyebrows knitted together as he tired to put together concepts which were so differerent from one another. Unless... His eyes shot open again. “So basically, it would be like we were disregarding some factors in alchemical transmutations. Like we weren't considering something. If what you are saying is true, all the transmutations would always backlash.”

Mei narrowed her eyes, considering this. “Not necessarily all of them, only the ones where the left out components were crucial. For example, if you fail to consider the life force of a piece of wood, you might still shape it differently without altering the flow. If you fail to take into account the life force of a fish, on the other had, you would kill it if you tried transmuting it.”

Al looked at her for a long time, as his mind worked, trying to place Mei's words in a context he could relate to. “So, basically,” he said at last, “only when on of the constituents of a transmutation is alive, like an animal or a person, this would become important.” His eyes widened, as something clicked into place in his brain. “The most difficult transmutations to perform are the ones involving animals! What we are getting at here is that alchemists are not considering the animals' life force! But then, why does medical transmutation work? Like what doctor Marcoh does?”

“You said it yourself. Alchemists consider the mind and soul for humans, they just don't consider them for animals!” Mei's eyes widened as well as she caught up with Al's reasoning.

“So all the failed transmutations in attempts to make chimeraes...” Al's voice trailed off. He couldn't believe he had never relised or even seen this.


	3. Chimerae

Al needed to concentrate. He had asked Mei to leave him alone with his notes for a while and she had complied, though reluctantly. So Al was now sitting alone in front of the scattered pages and diagrams that made up his alchemy notes, coded as long letters to his friends and family. He had started working on his code while travelling with Ed, observing his older brother keep his travel log dutifully. He wasn't all that obsessed with keeping alechemical knowledge secret, as he has spent most of his life (almost as far back as he could remember) persuing it, but he did understand the need to avoid incomplete and potentially dangerous knowledge falling into unwary hands. Alchemical knowledge was as much about the journey as it was about the destination. The quest for knowledge was what made you ready and worthy to have it in the first place.

So he had surrendered to doing what generations of alchemists had done before him, and had come up with his own code for his notes. He knew his older brother would probably see through it in a second, but then again he thought that through the years he had developed a reasonable understanding of the code Ed used as well. They had been studying alchemy together for far too long. Al smiled at the thought. Niisan... he couldn't wait to let his brother know about what he thought he had found. At the moment, though, the letter addressed to Ed sitting in front of him was actually not a letter at all, and to the uninitiated reader would only supply information on the food and scenary in Xing. He still needed to organize his ideas, but after months he finally felt like he was making some progress.

What he and Mei had touched upon earlier needed some deeper thought. He wanted to get a few things straight before he discussed the matter further with her. He felt so close to what he had been looking for... 

Alchemical transmutations involving animals were the hardest to get right. The text books he had read always insisted that this was because animal physiology was not as well-studied and understood as human physiology, but now Al had a new perspective on the problem: what if the trouble was that alchemy didn't take into account the life force, what could be called soul and mind of animals? After all, what made humans and animals different biologically and physiologically? Historically, alchemy had sprung from what were basically religious traditions and evolved later (Al tried hard not to think “because of Father”) into more of a science. Perhaps that is where the difference between human and animal transmutation came. Biologically, Mei was right. There wasn't much difference between a lion and a woman, between a boar and a man.

To keep using familiar words, how to account for animal soul and mind? Al thought back to the chimerae he knew. Martel, Dolcetto, Roa, Heinkel, Darius and finally his travelmates, Jerso and Zampano. They all retained physical characteristics of the animals they shared an existence with, obviously, so the fusion of the bodies was easy to see. But they also had more, they had the instincts and feelings of animals, too. Ed had told him a lot about how Heinkel and Darius fought, how much they let their animal instincts take over. Could that be an indication of something, the life force, the mind or soul, for lack of better words, of the animals in them? This would also explain why so many experiments failed, when attempting to make chimerae. When this—instinct, this—life force, was not put into the equation.

This would mean there was a way to undo the transmutation, too.


End file.
